Board Of Education Discusses Drop In Enrollment

By Marija Ilic

Barbour County Board of Education met on Monday, November 18, 2024, for their regularly scheduled meeting, during which they heard updates about the enrollment and subsequent loss of funding.

Since last school year, the county schools saw the drop in enrollment from 2079 students to 1966. The reasons vary from some students moving to enrollment in charter schools or families’ choice to homeschool. For each student enrolled, the school system receives certain amount of funding from the state. Once students leave the school system for homeschooling or charter schools, the funding follows them. On October 1, Barbour County Board of Education was informed that they needed to return $10,000 to the state for the students who left the public school system.

Recently elected Board member Durst inquired as to what happens when students return back to the public school, upon which he was informed that the school does not receive the money back at that point, but the charter schools or recipients of Hope Scholarship get to keep the money, even though the student has reenrolled in the public school system. He inquired further about what is being done on the state level about this, only to learn that this was the uphill battle that county boards of education across the state have been fighting with state legislature over.

Once the school system has to send the money back to the state for students who enrolled in charter schools, including online charter schools, and for the students who opted for homeschooling, the Board of Education is still expected to provide the same level of service to the students who remain in the public school system, despite losing the money.

Another issue brought up during the meeting was that due to drop in numbers of low income students (total of 176 in the county for the total of 12 percent), the schools are at risk of losing Title I funding. What appears to be statewide issue in number discrepancy between April and October would most notably affect the students of Junior Elementary School that is slated to lose all of its Title I funding.

Special Board of Education meeting is scheduled for December 2 at 4 p.m., while regular meeting will take place on December 9 at 6 p.m.